At present, payments in physical retail either happen through exchange of cash money or in a dematerialized manner via payment cards. At check-out of a store, an employee or the customer scans the products in his/her basket and the customer is offered to choice to make a cash payment or card payment.
In case of a cash payment, the customer exchanges coins and/or paper money with the employee or a money terminal and receives a payment receipt. The cash money is stored in an electronic cash register. Cash payments are disadvantageous in several ways. Such cash payments are time consuming for the customer and employee, require the availability of cash money with the customer and the presence of change in the electronic cash register of the store. Cash payments further involve safety measures to avoid theft or assaults, and to secure transfer of the cash money between the store and a bank.
Over the past decennia, dematerialized payments via payment cards, i.e. debit cards or credit cards or virtual cards stored on portable devices equipped with for instance Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, have become very popular. In order to be able to accept dematerialized payments via payment cards, a retail owner has to invest in payment terminals. Typically, each electronic cash register has to be supplemented with at least one payment terminal for contact or contactless payment cards. Such payment terminals require certification and maintenance. In other words, these payment terminals introduce investments and running costs for the retail owner. A further drawback of existing payment cards is that their functionality is restricted to authorizing dematerialized payments. If the customer is entitled to certain benefits because of loyalty, vouchers, reductions, etc., he/she still needs to claim such benefits by showing additional cards, e.g. a loyalty card, or coupons at check-out of the store.
As an alternative to cash payments and card payments, money transactions can be made through an ecommerce application on a portable device, e.g. a smartphone or tablet PC. Existing ecommerce applications however require the customer to execute multiple consecutive steps on a rather small display. In addition, it is not always evident to establish a link between the ecommerce application and the physical retailer resulting in poor user satisfaction.
It is an objective of the present invention to disclose a method, service and application for payment at a merchant's electronic cash register that overcomes the above mentioned drawbacks of existing solutions. More particularly, it is an objective to present a payment method that eliminates the need for installing and maintaining payment terminal infrastructure, enables fast check-out at a physical retail and enhances user experience by eliminating the need to keep loyalty cards, coupons, etc.